Smoked Bacon, Apple, and Cabbage

BC: Before Cabbage

This time of year, the pantry is loaded and the fridge is full. We’re working our way through it all, but we’ve had our fill of rich dishes and heavy meals. My last hurrah will be a huge pot of grillades we’ll cook off this afternoon for a New Year’s breakfast tomorrow. Otherwise we’re winding down the holiday season and have started picking at leftovers rather than cooking many full meals — carving off a few ounces of smoked ham for hash, sandwiches, or snacks; killing off the gravlax, tucking into roasted sweet potatoes from two nights ago; using the last bits from open bottles and jars.

A fridge purge, in other words. Good to do a few times a year, anyway, but eating up everything in what's been a fridge full of rotating food makes me feel — just a bit — virtuous. Either that, or I'm a sensitive about how much money we tend to blow on the holiday feasting and it's time to reel in the spending.

Part of the purge did involve a bit of cooking, but a hot dish of pork and apples — and a few other odds and ends lying about the place — was quick and barely any work at all. The juniper berries give it a whiff of gin; just the thing for a chilly night.

AD: Already Done

Smoked Bacon, Apple, and Cabbage 

8-12 oz smoked bacon, sliced and cut into finger-width pieces
1 green/white cabbage, cored and sliced coarsely
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cooking apples, cored and cut into slices or small chunks 

Seasonings 

6-8 juniper berries, crushed
1 tsp sea salt
2 long peppers, crushed (or 1 tsp black pepper)
1 tsp dried thyme
2 Tbl red wine vinegar
1 Tbl brown sugar
a knifepoint of ground mace or a few gratings of nutmeg 

Heat the oven at 350°F/180°C. 

In a heavy cast-iron pot with a lid (I use a big-ass Le Creuset), cook the bacon over medium heat until browned and just lightly crisped at the edges. Add the onion and cook until it softens. Add the apple chunks and stir them around until they’ve got a bit of color, then stir in the seasonings and the cabbage. Add the remaining ingredients and cover. Pop it in the oven and cook 30-45 minutes until the apples are cooked through, the cabbage is softened, and the whole thing is piping hot.

Goes well with:

• If you've got a bit of country sausage languishing in the fridge or freezer, these biscuits ain't a half-bad way to use it up.
• Bacon jam. Some make it with coffee, but that's unspeakably nasty. Try it that way if nasty is your bag, but otherwise, my version with apple cider and a restrained amount of maple syrup is the one you want. 
• Bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover. Don't delay. Make them today. Your future self may thank you tomorrow morning. 
• Those grillades we're making today? A recipe I tweaked from New Orleans chef John Besh. Eight pounds of pork shoulder that will go into the pot this afternoon...and will be gone by this time tomorrow.
• Although we didn't make noodles for this one, a batch of homemade German egg noodles would've been a solid side. 

Homemade Bacon Jam with Apple Cider

It’s pork and apple season around the Whiskey Forge. The mornings are cold again and I’m glad to have laid in supplies of cured meats along with various ciders and apple brandies to help take the chill off these brisk days and dark nights.

Frying the bacon; brown but not too crip

Of course, it’s never quite not pork season here and when the meat in question is bacon, seasons don’t play into the menu as much as they might with, say, a crown roast or garden tomatoes; we eat the stuff sparingly, but all through the year. When recipes for jam based on bacon started pinging on my radar last year, I decided to tweak them and give a go to my own version. Coffee seems an integral flavoring to many recipes, but it’s not a taste I wanted in my jam. Tinkering with cider, cider vinegar, and maple syrup instead helped give this sweet meaty jam a deep and complex flavor.

Spread it on toast? Yes, if you like. I mix mine into baked mac n cheese, fold it into cream of celeriac soup, streak it trough layers of a potato gratin, add it to cooked spinach with more garlic, and put dollops in folded-over puff pastry with a bit of cheese to bake cheaty little hand pies.

What would you do with it?

Bacon Jam 

2 pounds smoked, dry-cured bacon
3 large yellow onions
8-10 cloves of garlic
1/3 c/80ml grade B maple syrup
2/3 c/160ml cider vinegar
2/3 c/160ml light brown sugar
1 c/250ml apple cider
1 tsp black pepper 

Done cooking; ready for the processor

Cut bacon into lardoons or small strips. Place them in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy-bottomed pan, then cook on very low heat, stirring now and then, until the bacon is browned but not too crisp.

While the bacon is gently frying, peel, quarter, and slice the onions thinly. Peel and mince the garlic. Combine them in a bowl and set it aside.

When the bacon is cooked, remove it from the Dutch oven with slotted spoon and set it aside in a bowl. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the hot bacon fat, leaving in as much of the browed bits as possible that cling to the bottom of the pan.

At this point, throw away this fat if you want — but that would be foolish. Save it for making  cornbread, bacon fat mayonnaise, sautéing vegetables, flavoring succotash, etc.

Turn the prepared onions and garlic into the bacon fat in the pan and cook over a low flame until they start to brown. Deglaze the pan with a splash of water or cider if necessary. Add the remaining ingredients, including the cooked bacon, and bring to a boil. Boil about two minutes, then reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring now and then, until the entire mass is sticky, dark brown and the meaty bits of bacon look almost shellacked (about 2.5 hours).

Towards the end of the cooking, stir often; it likes to stick to the pan.

Cool this mixture off the heat for about five minutes, then pulse in a food processor 3-4 times to yield a rough puree.

Done. Put in it a jar, keep it in the fridge.

~ Makes about 3.5 cups

Goes well with:

• Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon (and a hand-dandy bacon glossary)
• Maynard Davies' Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer. Maynard has several bacon books. My review of his latest and most detailed is here, ideal for those who want to cure pork bellies.  Includes links to his other bacon books.
• A broad, steaming bowl of Speckklöße — bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover (or just a simple, homey dinner).

Jesus Juice Sorbet

For decades, Spaniards have indulged in iced calimocha, a simple drink that is about as easy as an on-the-go drinker could want: equal parts red wine and Coca Cola. Nobody is about to win any bartending awards with this thing, but what it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in tastiness — sweet, slightly bitter, and about 7% alcohol, but it's easy to take along to the beach, a picnic, or a fútbol game.

The drink is not unique to Spain and it travels under a number of names wherever one finds wine and soda. American wine coolers, for instance, clearly are in the same family. In fact, if you think of it as a sort of bare-bones, stripped-down, single-chromosome sangria, calimocha's flexibility becomes manifest.

Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, founders of Humphrey Slocombe ice cream shop in San Francisco, seem to have recognized this and have given the wine-and-cola combo a Neverland twist as a sorbet. "Michael Jackson died suddenly on the afternoon of Thursday, June 25, 2009," they write in Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book. "Before his corpse was cold and the Botox wore off, we were working on a new flavor to pay tribute to the fallen icon." Jesus Juice — reports vary on the variety of wine and how, precisely, soda was incorporated — was Jackson's name for the concoction of wine and soda he favored around the ranch.

For the end of summer when nights are cool enough for blankets, but the days are hot as blazes, here's Godby and Vahey's recipe for Jesus Juice sorbet. The duo caution, however, that it may cause inappropriate touching.

Jesus Juice Sorbet

1 cup sugar 
1 cup water 
1 cinnamon stick 
2 cups cola [Mexican Coke]
1 cup good-quality dry red wine 
2 Tbl red wine vinegar 
1 tsp salt  

In a large, heavy-bottomed, nonreactive saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar and water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Drop in the cinnamon stick and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Stir in the cola, wine, vinegar, and salt and remove from the heat. Let cool completely, then cover the bowl tightly and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour or preferably overnight. When you are ready to freeze the mixture, take out the cinnamon stick, transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker, and spin according to the manufacturer's instructions. Finish freezing in freezer. Stare approvingly at the Man in the Mirror. Eat immediately, or transfer to an airtight container, cover, and freeze for up to 1 week.

Jake Godby and Sean Vahey (2012)
Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book
144 pages (paperback)
Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452104689
$19.95

Goes well with:

• Gift of the Negi. Wine-and-cola is not unlike the 19th-century port wine concoction known as the Negus. Recipes here include one for children's parties from Isabella Beeton (Jackson would approve, I'm sure), a 38-gallon Negus made for England's King George IV, and (no surprise) an effervescing Negus made with soda water. Some things never get old...

Mexican Pickled Carrots (o: zanahorias en escabeche)

The radishes that appear on the table at chips-and-salsa type Mexican restaurants appeal to some, but the more common pickled jalapenos and carrots are my own weakness. Give me that, a continuing supply of cold beers, and no particular place to be and I don't care how long it takes for lunch to come.

My regular eating buddies have dainty and tepid appreciations for chiles, so the bowl invariably is left to me alone — and it always gets emptied, leaving just a little pool of oregano-flecked juice at the bottom. Sometimes the chiles are shockingly hot; other times, they're duds, no hotter than a garden-variety bell pepper. Part of the fun is finding out which kind I just popped in my mouth. Whether you know them as pickled carrots, Mexican carrots, zanahorias en escabeche, or (upping the chile quotient) chiles encurditos, know this: they're simple to make and they go fast.

For the vinegar, you can use the plain white stuff or a mix of half white and half rice vinegar, Filipino cane vinegar, or homemade pineapple vinegar.

Mexican Pickled Carrots

24 oz/750ml water
24 oz/750ml vinegar (see above)
1/3 cup/80ml canola or corn oil
5 bay leaves
1 Tbl oregano
1 tsp crushed black pepper
1 head of garlic, halved across the equator
2 lbs/1kilo carrots, sliced diagonal
4-5 jalapeno chiles, sliced diagonally
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced thinly

Bring the carrots and enough water to cover them by a finger width or two to a boil in a large pot. Cook at a low boil for 5-8 minutes, until tender but still with a bite. Cooked them too long? They're mush now? Feed them to the dog and start over.

Drain the carrots and give the pot a quick rinse. Mix the remaining ingredients except chiles and onion slices in the pot and bring to a boil. Add the drained carrots, the onion slices, and the uncooked chiles. Return to a boil, then take the pot off off the heat, cover, and let it rest overnight.

Pack into clean jars and store in the fridge.

Makes about 1.25 liters/5 cups.

Goes well with:

• Pork tenderloin in peanut sauce. It comes as a surprise to some Americans and Europeans that not all Mexican food is hot (though it was with glee that I saw a Frenchman clamp his hand to his mouth in shock and pain after sampling what I considered a mild table salsa). The recipe in the link above for filete de cerdo en cacahuate is one I adapted from Larousse de la cocina Mexicana.
• I make watermelon pickles with lemon and ginger. You should, too.
• Small batch half-sour pickles, a quick and simple recipe for making New York-style pickles when you don't feel up to cranking out a whole barrel of them or traveling to the city to enjoy them in situ.

Salsa de Chile de Arbol

The weekend is nearly on us. Given the current heat wave and our local drinking habits, that means beers, margaritas, chips, and salsa. Anything that keeps the kitchen from getting needlessly hot.

We're loaded up on fresh limes, Cointreau, Combier, and Grand Marnier, so the margaritas are under control. Beers are cooling and chips acquired. I just tossed a double handful of green tomatillos on the grill and made a batch of green salsa with tomatillos and dried chiles de arbol, those pencil-thin, long red chiles so common once you know to look for them.

Tomatillos, also called tomates verdes, resemble hard green tomatoes in husks, but the resemblance ends there. Though the tart little fruits can be used raw, I like them best cooked and have been known to give them a quick boil or to char them a bit on the grill. I'm particularly fond of the tomatillo/chipotle combination and have made quick stews of little more than chicken, squash, roasted tomatillos, lime, salt, chicken stock, and smoked peppers.

The idea for this salsa came from Patricia van Rhijn's La cocina del chile. This isn't as smoky as chipotle versions, but packs a pleasant heat. If you don't like tart tastes, you won't dig this, but if you do — tuck in. Want a stronger garlic kick? Don't roast it with the other ingredients. Make sure everyone eats some, though; you don't want to be the only one with superhuman garlic breath.

My interpretation and quantity tweaks are below. Her original follows that in case you'd like to double check my imperfect Spanish.

Salsa de chile de arbol

8 dried chiles de arbol
8 tomatillos
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp (cider or pineapple) vinegar
Dash of salt 

Clean and wash the tomatillos. Grill them with the chiles and garlic.

Once the ingredients are roasted, remove and discard the hard core of the tomatillos, grind everything in a blender with vinegar and add salt to taste. I like to leave discernible chunks of garlic and chile in mine.

And here's van Rhijn's original directions:

Salsa de chile de arbol

Ingredientes (para 1 taza)

6 chiles de arbol secos
6 tomates verdes
3 dientes de ajo
1 cucharadita de vinagre

Preparacion:

Los tomates se limpian y lavan. Se ponen a asar junto con los chiles y los ajos. 

Una vez que los ingredientes esten asados, se muelen con el vinagre y se agrega sal al gusto.

Patricia van Rhijn (2003)
La cocina del chile
Introduction by Laura Esquivel, photos by Ignacio Urguiza
Editorial Planeta Mexicana
Hardback (191 pages)
ISBN 9706908684

Adobo, Pfeffernüsse, and a Game Called "Filippino"

I woke this morning thinking about adobo and Pfeffernüsse. No, it's not some lame odd-couple cop movie. They're two different foods. My brain runs that way, holding simultaneous parallel thoughts that have nothing to do with each other. It's not always for the best.

Adobo is a particularly Filipino way of preparing chicken, but also beef, pork, fish, and other animal proteins that often incorporates vinegar, garlic, black pepper, bay leaves, onions, and sometimes coconut milk. It's amazingly good and my life is better both for knowing how to make a few varieties and for having stellar Filipino friends who introduced me to it. 

Pfeffernüsse, on the other hand, hail from Germany. They are tiny cookies (literally "pepper nuts") that are more or less heavily spiced. They're good with coffee, tea, hot chocolate, hot spiced wines, and other winter warmers. Spices may include black pepper, anise, mint, ginger, cloves, etc. One also finds them under similar names in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Scandinavia. I first had them in graduate school in Kansas where a large Mennonite population still consider them part of traditional — almost obligatory — Christmas baking.

See? Simultaneous parallel thoughts that have nothing to do with each other.

Then, as I mulled over the morning's news with hot tea, I pulled a book on Pfeffernüsse off the cookie shelves. Page 25 of Peppernuts Plain and Fancy holds this little gem contributed by Johanne Reynolds of Hong Kong:

In Denmark pebernødder (peppernuts) were very much a part of our Christmas celebration. Not only did we children bake them, but also played a peppernuts game — 'filippino' — guessing how many pebernødder an opponent held in his hand. If you guessed correctly, he forfeited his handful to you. If wrong, you shared from your "store" the same number he held in his hand. That's the nearest we ever came to gambling in our Lutheran home!

A simple game for simpler times. Maybe 'filippino' was just one family's game, maybe it was more widespread. I'm not Danish, so I don't know. I do wonder, though, how it came to have the name. No answers today, just questions.


Norma J. Voth (1978) Peppernuts Plain and Fancy: A Christmas Tradition from Grandmother’s Oven. Herald Press, Scottsdale, Pennsylvania.

Capuchin Capers? Them's Just Pickled Nasturtium Pods

The first I’d heard of capuchin capers was in John Evelyn’s 1699 Acetaria. Subtitled A Discourse of Sallets, the book details the types and uses of plants destined for grand salads of 300 years ago. In recent years, we’ve become accustomed to more eclectic salads than those of, say, the mid-20th century. When once iceberg lettuce ruled America, we now don’t give a second glance at arugula, mâche, radicchio, and perhaps torn herbs tossed in the bowl.

Nasturtium seed pods

17th and 18th century salads — or, rather, sallets, salats, and such spellings — could be a riot of colors, vegetables, fruits, flowers…and seeds. Capuchin capers were nothing more than the seed pods of nasturtium plants preserved in the manner of more exotic — and pricey — Mediterranean capers.

Although many older sources mention the striking similarity between pickled nasturtium pods and actual capers (also a pickled bud), I gave them short shrift; it seemed just one more example of a foodstuff born of scarcity while users convinced themselves it was just as good as the real thing.

Turns out, capuchin and Mediterranean capers are surprisingly similar. The color is not quite the right green (too light), the covering (ridged and grooved) is off, but the smell and — more importantly — the taste is close enough that after running an experimental batch earlier this summer, I went into the fields to gather enough buds for a few pints.

Fence row nasturtium flowers and seed pods in San Diego

Evelyn notes nasturtiums ought “to be monthly Sown: But above all the Indian, moderately hot, and aromatick, quicken the torpent Spirits, and purge the Brain, and are of Singular effect against the Scorbute [scurvy]. Both the tender Leaves, Calices, Cappuchin Capers, and Flowers, are laudably mixed with the colder Plants.”

“Monthly sown” because nasturtiums are in their entirety such useful plants and a supply throughout the growing season makes good sense. For using the plants’ “hot and aromatick” properties into winter, Evelyn recommends candying the buds as strewing herbs (that is, strewn on the floors of homes to keep down the stink in pre-modern England). Haven’t tried that. But those capers are another story.

Evelyn’s cappuchin capers (also capuchin, capuchine, capuccin, etc) are named after capucine, the French word for nasturtium. One presumes the French name for the flower comes from Capuchin friars who may have grown them as medicinal plants in their monasteries. One is not, however, a scholar of French etymology, and will leave that that shit alone for now [edit 2 Aug 2010: see Tammy's note below for confirmation of my inexpert use of French].

Adapted from The River Cottage Preserves Handbook’s recipe for Nasturium “capers”, here’s

Capuchin Capers

5 tsp salt
7 oz nasturtium seed pods
2 bay leaves (see "Notes on aromatics" below)
2.5 cup white/rice wine vinegar

Add the salt to 2.5 cups distilled or bottled water. Stir to dissolve. Rinse and drain the seed pods, then add them to the brine. Allow to stand 24 hours at room temperature.

Drain and dry the pods well. Pack into sterilized small jars, add the bay leaves (and/or other aromatics, if using). Leave about half an inch of headroom, then top with vinegar. Seal with vinegar-proof lids and leave in a cool, dark place for at least two weeks.

Notes on aromatics: Poke around old receipt books and you’ll find seemingly unending recipes for nasturtiums and their buds. They do have a peppery bite and go well in salads, with steaks, etc. Historically, a broad range of aromatics have complemented that bite when preserving the seed pods: dill, tarragon, chervil, nutmeg, black pepper, mace, cloves, bay leaves, etc. I used bay leaves only, but play with the flavors that suit you.

Strew the “capers” in salads, use them in tartar sauce, make compound butters, season tapenade with them. They’re versatile, they’re cheap, and they’re a bit of the 17th century you can bring to your own table as easy as pie. Or, rather, pye.

Goes well with:

• Evelyn, John (1699) Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets. Prospect Books out of the UK has issued a handsome printing edited by Christopher Driver and with a forward by Tom Jaine — Powell’s in Portland carries it. (Prospect also released C. Anne Wilson’s laudable history of distillation, Water of Life).
• My take on The River Cottage Preserves Handbook.

From Pineapple Cups to Pineapple Vinegar

Drinks around our house mostly come in glass or ceramic vessels. But now and then, I catch a wild hare and end up carving out whole pineapples to make oversized cups for two-handed drinks that invariably contain a bucket of rum. Yeah, yeah, it’s all terribly fancy.

The problem is what to do with the pineapple mugs when you’re done with the drinks. Some throw them out. Some compost them. Me? I rinse mine out and cut them — skin and all — into small pieces so I can make a light, fruity vinegar for my pork marinades, salad dressings, and some sausages.

The idea came from Diana Kennedy’s opus on Mexican food, The Art of Traditional Mexican Cooking. Piloncillo, the sugar she calls for in her recipe below, is readily available in Mexican markets. The hard little pylons of dark brown sugar may be either grated or crushed. I crushed mine in a tea towel with a hammer. The vinegar takes several weeks to make, but it’s good to have around.

It's worth noting that the vinegar, as it ferments, becomes a nasty, vile little pot of scum that attracts fruit flies from the surrounding five counties. I keep it outside, loosely covered with a lid to keep out rain and critters, but not so tight that it excludes air. I also use a rubber band to secure a large square of cheesecloth over the opening to keep the fruit flies out. Can't stress enough how disgusting this looks as it develops. No worries. When it's done, you'll strain it — and maybe rack it — and it will clear into a limpid, amber vinegar.

Pineapple Vinegar

When you are using a pineapple for other purposes, save the peelings, along with a little of the flesh. Add:

4 heaped tablespoons crushed piloncillo or dark brown sugar 1 ½ quarts water

Mix well and set, uncovered, in a sunny, warm spot to ferment. In it should begin to ferment in about three days and keep on fermenting until the sugar has been converted and the liquid becomes acidy [sic]. It may be cloudy to begin with, but as it sits it will clear and gradually turn to a dark a amber color. This may take three weeks or more. By this time a mother – a gelatinous white disc – should be just beginning to form. Leave until it is quite solid – up to another three weeks – then strain the liquid and cork, ready for use. Put the mother with more sugar and water – a little more pineapple if you have it, but it is not really necessary – and leave to form more vinegar.

Diana Kennedy (1989)
The Art of Traditional Mexican Cooking:
Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados.
Bantam Books, New York.

Goes well with:

• Tiare Olsen's tiki drink Pineapple Delight calls for using an entire pineapple as a cup. See her recipe at A Mountain of Crushed Ice.
• For instructions on carving that pineapple cup, see Dr. Bamboo's clear illustration here.